The ability to coordinate detectors accurately, and the increasing power of computers, allows for the accumulation and organization of image data in a manner not formerly possible, at very high speeds and at a relatively low cost. The many applications include quality control in production lines, examination of internal organs, facial recognition and missile tracking.
To focus on the last problem, or opportunity, we know that the recent availability of ultra-high-speed processors allows the computation of highly complex data in speeds approaching real-time. With fast image recognition algorithms and high-speed software, 3D ranging can be done in milliseconds. This allows equally fast (and automated) response to incoming aircraft or missiles threatening a military asset—a tank, a radar station, a navy ship—all the while the missiles being unaware that they are being tracked and therefore less capable of taking evasive or jamming action.
A missile approaching at 600 mph will take six seconds to cover a mile. Its identity and vectors of range, bearing, velocity, etc. must be grasped instantly for evasive or defensive action to be taken.
Ranging relates to perception in three dimensions in that an object needs to be seen from two or more points of view in order to calculate its range and properly determine its character.
As the Navy puts it: “Three-dimensional imaging technology, using image data collected from multiple offset cameras, may be able to passively provide the automated ranging capabilities to the war fighter that were previously only available through active systems that risked the possibility of counter-detection in their use.”
This invention focuses specifically on the use of epipolar lines and the use of matrix transformations to coordinate detectors: to organize them in a manner which is intuitive and effective in perceiving perspectives which are not otherwise possible; to make detectors effective over long and short ranges; to calculate range precisely; to allow redundancy; and even to allow perspectives from angles from which no detectors exist. Until recently the possibility of doing all these things virtually simultaneously did not even exist.